[Talk-GB] OS Open Names

[Chris Hill]

Hi,
I've been looking at OS Open Names, part of the Ordnance Survey Open 
Data. OS notified me that OS Locator will be withdrawn, hinted that 
Codepoint Open will be withdrawn too and that OS Open Names is the 
combined replacement. OS Open Names is published under OGL, so it is 
compatible with OSM's licence.

The OS Open Names data has place names, road names and postcode 
centroids, all with location fields. Original OS open data was 
positioned to a square metre, the new locations have decimal parts of 
metres which may make them a bit more accurate, possibly millimetre 
accurate.

I have extracted the postcode data from OS Open Names and generated a 
fresh set of postcode tiles to look at. The centroid locations are 
different from the Codepoint Open and ONS locations, but all that I have 
checked seem an appropriate location, and possibly more useful. The 
difference is more than the sub-metre accuracy improvements. You can use 
oscompare[1] to see the new postcode centroids alongside the older 
centroids. I've made the Open Names postcodes magenta to distinguish 
them - I think I prefer red but I'll leave that for another day. You can 
use the tiles in JOSM and P2 using the url below[2]

The OS Locator replacement has a significant drawback: OS Locator had a 
field for the road name and a field for the road reference. OS Open 
Names ignores the reference for any road, or section of a road, that has 
name, only showing the reference for unnamed roads. (thanks to Robert 
(ris) for drawing my attention to this).

I now have the data extracted and reprojected to replace OS grid refs 
with lon, lat. If anyone is interested in this data I can supply it, 
please ask.

[1] 
http://oscompare.raggedred.net/?zoom=17&lat=53.95537&lon=-1.03351&layers=B00FFTFT

[2] http://www.raggedred.net/tiles/opennames/{z}/{x}/{y}.png

-- 
Cheers, Chris
user: chillly